NEIDL in the News
A rare Marburg outbreak sparks a race against time to test vaccines and drugs
Original article from STAT by Helen Branswell. February 14, 2023 A Marburg fever outbreak in Equatorial Guinea is galvanizing efforts to test drugs and vaccines for a virus that currently has none. But every day counts, warned experts who gathered virtually on Tuesday to try to chart a course for the work. The... More
WHO abandons plans for crucial second phase of COVID-origins investigation
Original article from Nature by Smriti Mallapaty. February 14, 2023 Sensitive studies in China were intended to pinpoint the source of the pandemic virus. The World Health Organization (WHO) has quietly shelved the second phase of its much-anticipated scientific investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing ongoing challenges over attempts... More
Lab-leak fears are putting virologists under scrutiny
Original article from the Washington Post by Joel Achenbach. January 18, 2023 BOSTON — The experiment probed a coronavirus mystery: Why is the omicron variant apparently less deadly than the original Wuhan strain? The researchers at Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratories (the NEIDL, pronounced like “the needle”) created a new... More
Coronavirus ‘chimera’ made in lab shows what makes omicron seemingly less deadly
Original article from the Washington Post by Joel Achenbach. January 11, 2023 A controversial coronavirus experiment at Boston University has identified a mutation in the omicron variant that might help explain why it doesn't appear to be as likely to sicken or kill as the original strain that emerged in China. The finding... More
NEIDL Researchers Discover New SARS-CoV-2 Weak Spot—Which Could Inspire Improved Vaccines
Original article from The Brink by The Brink Staff. January 11, 2023 Nature publishes BU-led COVID study that made international headlines; scientists find viral protein called NSP6, not just spike, responsible for making Omicron less dangerous than past variants After three years of infections, lockdowns, and vaccinations, we know a lot about SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19—but... More
BU Responds to NIH Funding Clarification Request after False Stories about NEIDL’s COVID Work
Original article from The Brink by The Brink Staff. November 4, 2022 Confirms University did fund headline-making study and that researchers will update paper citations Boston University has responded to a National Institutes of Health (NIH) request for more information about how researchers cited funding in a COVID-19 study paper that sparked international... More
Fact Check-Boston University hybrid COVID virus kills 80% of mice, not people
Original article from Reuters by Reuters Fact Check. October 25, 2022 Social media users have claimed that researchers at Boston University created a new strain of COVID-19 (Omi-S) that can kill 80% of people it infects. While the researchers said in a preprint study that they created a virus combining the spike protein of... More
Lab Manipulations of Covid Virus Fall Under Murky Government Rules
Original article from the New York Times by Carl Zimmer and Benjamin Mueller. October 22, 2022 Mouse experiments at Boston University have spotlighted an ambiguous U.S. policy for research on potentially dangerous pathogens. Scientists at Boston University came under fire this week for an experiment in which they tinkered with the Covid virus. Breathless headlines claimed they had... More
Which COVID studies pose a biohazard? Lack of clarity hampers research
Original article from Nature by Ewen Callaway and Max Kozlov. October 21, 2022 Controversy surrounding a study that involved modifying the SARS-CoV-2 virus has prompted researchers to call for better guidance from funders. When researchers at Boston University (BU) in Massachusetts inserted a gene from the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 into a... More
BU lab wasn’t required to clear potentially controversial study with NIH, director says
Original article from STAT by Helen Branswell. October 18, 2022 The director of a Boston University laboratory that conducted potentially controversial research on the viruses that cause Covid-19 said his institution didn’t clear the work with the National Institutes of Health because it wasn’t funded by the federal agency. Ronald Corley said... More
NEIDL Researchers Refute UK Article about COVID Strain
Original article from The Brink by The Brink Staff. October 17, 2022 Boston University is refuting a series of misleading claims about research at the University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL). The reports, which first appeared on Monday in the United Kingdom’s Daily Mail, claimed researchers at the lab had... More
Research panel, including BU’s Gerald Keusch, says pandemic came from nature, not a lab
Original article from Science by Jon Cohen. October 10, 2022 The acrimonious debate over the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic flared up again this week with a report from an expert panel concluding that SARS-CoV-2 likely spread naturally in a zoonotic jump from an animal to humans—without help from a lab. “Our... More
Biochemist Mohsan Saeed Awarded Two Prestigious Federal Grants to Study Viruses
Mohsan Saeed, PhD, assistant professor of biochemistry, has received a five-year, $2 million R35 grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, as well as a five-year, $2.5 million R01 grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. It is extremely rare for an early-stage investigator to... More
Nancy J. Sullivan Named New NEIDL Director
Original article from The Brink by Andrew Thurston. September 16, 2022 Nancy J. Sullivan, a nationally renowned infectious diseases expert and chief of the Biodefense Research Section at the federal government’s Vaccine Research Center, has been named the new director of Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL). A cell biologist... More
BU Researchers: We Have the Potential to Prevent Endemic Monkeypox
Original article from BU Today by Jillian McKoy. August 23, 2022 The 2022 fall semester marks the third school year of the COVID-19 pandemic, but this year, ongoing concerns about COVID are accompanied by concern around the rapidly spreading monkeypox virus. Since the first US case of the current monkeypox (MPX) outbreak... More
Monkeypox Cases—and Concern—Climbing
Original article from The Brink by Sophie Yarin. August 3, 2022 Concerns about monkeypox are mounting, as cases climb in the United States and abroad. On July 23, the World Health Organization deemed the virus a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). Governors in New York, California, and Illinois have followed the WHO’s lead, More
BU’s Nahid Bhadelia Joins White House COVID-19 Response Team
Original article from The Brink by Andrew Thurston. June 13, 2022 Nahid Bhadelia, an infectious diseases physician and founder of Boston University’s Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy & Research (CEID), has joined the White House COVID-19 Response Team as senior policy advisor for global COVID response. The team’s founding goal... More
Draft bill would ban CDC, NIH from funding lab research in China
Original article from Science by Jocelyn Kaiser. June 12, 2022 A proposal moving through Congress to bar the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from funding research laboratories in China is sparking concern among scientists. If signed into law, the measure could cut off millions... More
After the Infection Is Gone: MassCPR experts discuss the knowns and unknowns of long COVID.
Original article from Harvard Medical School News by Ekaterina Pesheva. June 9, 2022 As the vast majority of the world’s population continues to encounter SARS-CoV-2 virus and become infected, one question looms ever larger: What will be the long-term physiological repercussions of having had COVID? Experts from the Harvard Medical School–led Massachusetts Consortium on... More
How Worried Should We Be about Monkeypox? Interview with John H. Connor
Original article from The Brink by Doug Most. May 25 , 2022 As if COVID-19 is not enough to worry about, now there is monkeypox. In Boston, one patient hospitalized with the monkeypox virus came in contact with 200 people (most of them healthcare workers). And the World Health Organization (WHO) has... More